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Thursday, April 30, 2015

How Do You Protect Your Data From Going Rogue?

As IT Admins we struggle to keep up with the growing list of
demands generated by our users. The span of these demands are immense, you
could be working on implementing some new shared storage for your environment only
to be interrupted by someone looking for a blank DVD, spare flash drive, or
maybe an external HDD.

I’ve been there many times before.

When asked for these temporary storage devices I always wanted
to offer these up and get back to the more important tasks I’m working on. But
the Admin in me would immediately question the lack of control being introduced
with these devices. What if the files they’re putting on these devices contain
proprietary information? What if it gets lost? What if it’s stolen? What risks
are we susceptible to when offering up these tools to enable collaboration with
outside entities?

Many companies have worked to address security and data control
concerns through policies and training and for the most part I think these do a
good job bringing awareness of the security risks to the end users. But there
is always going to be a time where it’s just too easy to drag and drop some
files to a flash drive (or to the cloud!) to share with someone else.

Backing up data is one thing – creating multiple copies to
protect from disasters or file deletions is generally fairly easy. But when a
copy of those files is released into the wild you lose control. How do you
solve this common problem?

Like many areas in IT, there are multiple ways to tackle the
issue ranging from old-school to more modern approaches. Coming up with the
solution that fits your business needs can be a challenge. There comes a point where the level of
control is prohibitive to the ease of use. The engineers at GLC have a range of
experience dealing with this and would love opportunity to work with you
through this process. We can offer our insight and experience while we work
together on defining what you’re needs are and standing up a solution that will
work for both you and your users.